Bird's Cell
Originally, the Daniell cell held the two solutions in two separate, but linked, containers, an arrangement described as two half-cells. The first single-cell version of the Daniell cell was invented in 1837 by the Guy's hospital physician Golding Bird who used a plaster of Paris barrier to keep the solutions separate. Bird's experiments with this cell were of some importance to the new discipline of electrometallurgy. A surprising result from Bird's experiments was the deposition of copper on and within the plaster without any contact with the metal electrodes. So surprising, in fact, that it was at first disbelieved by electrochemical investigators, including Michael Faraday. Deposition of copper, and other metals, had been previously noted, but always previously it had been metal on metal electrode. Bird's cell was the basis for the development of the porous pot cell.
Read more about this topic: Daniell Cell
Famous quotes containing the words bird and/or cell:
“Alas for the cripple Practice when it seeks to come up with the bird Theory, which flies before it. Try your design on the best school. The scholars are of all ages and temperaments and capacities. It is difficult to class them, some are too young, some are slow, some perverse. Each requires so much consideration, that the morning hope of the teacher, of a day of love and progress, is often closed at evening by despair.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Let man consider what he is in comparison with all existence; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself. What is a man in the infinite?”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)